All The Stars
by DreamingOfHalcyons
Summary: How do you make a monster stop feeling monstrous? You give them something they can hold in their palms without it crushing. You give them something sweet and tell them to keep it. You wipe the blood from their hands, you say their name over and over, like an absolution. You forgive them. You forgive them. You forgive them. Everyday, for as long as they need to hear it.


**I went down the rabbit hole of watching Dexter for the millionth time, and I just kinda thought, what would happen if Stiles was the same? Hence, this fic. I hope you enjoy :)**

* * *

 _This maybe the night that my dreams might let me know_

 _All the stars are closer, all the stars are closer, all the stars are closer_

X X X

The moonlight was illuminating their apartment, flooding in through the windows and the cracks beneath the doors.

Lydia was alone for the fifth day in a row and she was beginning to feel it. The panic. The dread that she'd receive that unavoidable phone call telling her Stiles is gone. That he wasn't strong enough this time.

She curls her feet up and tucks them underneath her as she sits in the arm chair in their living room in the apartment. The apartment he's never in. She looks outside, her eyes following the cars that speed by too quickly to be Stiles. She doesn't know why she lets him do it, but she does.

She guesses that's what love is.

This life has scarred him, he's injured in so many more ways than one. And truthfully, Lydia doesn't know how to fix him. She doesn't know what jagged piece to begin with and how it'll fit with the next one. He's un-become. He isn't whole. Parts of himself chipped when he blamed himself for Allison's death, then he lost whole chunks when he killed Donovan.

This is why Lydia lets him go out and kill the bad guys, because he thinks it redeems himself for everything he's done. If he believes it then Lydia will.

Stiles doesn't know how to heal, and Lydia doesn't know how to make him heal. She can press a kiss to his forehead every night and pretend it's what he needs. She can let him hold her at night and pretend that she's fixing the pieces together.

But she isn't healing him.

She isn't sure he can be healed.

He's damaged beyond repair, and Lydia accepts that. But she knows Stiles doesn't.

It's almost midnight and he isn't back. She only starts to really panic if he isn't home within seven days, but now it's rolling onto the sixth day and she feels sick. What if no-one listens to her prayers and he's taken away from her?

She looks out at the stars and thinks that he could be looking at the exact same ones, from wherever he is in the country. And if God doesn't listen to her prayers she hopes the stars do.

There's a key crackling in the door and Lydia has an enormous wave of relief wash over her. She swings her legs out from underneath her and they meet the cool floor. She glides into the hall and makes it to the door just in time to see Stiles.

Her Stiles.

His face ruddy and red from the winters night, his ears burning pink when he takes his beanie off. His hair is disheveled, a lot like when he wakes up, but Lydia doesn't get a chance to over analyse his hair because he's wrapping his arms around her and meeting her lips in a kiss.

"God I love you." Lydia murmurs against his soft lips, as she chases him for another kiss.

She can taste him, it's like winter and earth and mint all mixed into one. She thanks every star in the sky for bringing him back to her.

He kisses her and pulls away enough to speak. "I was gone for five days."

Lydia smiles and Stiles kisses her jaw and her throat. "Five days too long."

She can feel liquid heat burn and rush between her thighs at just the thought of him.

It's a weird feeling, being so loved by someone like Stiles. Maybe when they were eighteen it wouldn't of felt this weird. But now they're twenty-one and Stiles is a murderer. Not the regular kind, he kills the people that deserve it. But how can she feel safest when she's with someone like that? Maybe he is a monster, but that doesn't frighten Lydia.

He moves so that Lydia is resting against the wall and he's looming over her, kissing her again and again until he doesn't know any other taste but her. She pulls back, so she can look at him.

He's acquired scars over the years, and every time he comes home she looks for a new one. There's one above his eyebrow which happened a year ago, when he started this scheme of hunting down the guilty supernatural packs. He has more moles than he used to, if he travels to places that get more sun than Beacon Hills then he comes back freckly. He has a long, drawn out mark on his neck from where a pack of Kanima's slashed him.

He isn't the same Stiles he was a few years ago, he's changed. He's more buff and more wise. This life has crafted him into something she doesn't know.

Now, he has a cut beneath his eye along with some bruising which will scar. But it isn't deep enough to last forever.

He should be a monster, really. His face is ragged and tired and scarred. So is his mind. And she knows he thinks that about himself too. She sees it in the way he looks at himself in the mirror when he's shaving. She sees it when he's with his dad. She sees it when he's holding her. She sees it now.

How do you make a monster stop feeling monstrous?

He's looking in her eyes intently, and she finds it hard to think that the same color of amber and whiskey and chestnut have been the same all his life. He entered the world with no scars, completely innocent with these Bambi eyes and now here he is, holding the girl he loves after just murdering a group of creatures who deserved it.

"Hey." She whispers quietly, the moonlight the only reason she can see him.

"Hey." He replies, his lips pressing a kiss to her neck.

She can feel his scruff, and that's enough to reassure her that he's here and he's safe.

He cups her jaw with one hand, and she notices how bruised his knuckles are, how they're cracked with dried blood in the middle.

"Lets get you cleaned up." Lydia pecks his lips once more and takes his hand gently and walks him to the en suite.

She has been doing this every time he comes home for a year. She doesn't mind it, but it makes her realize how long he's gone. He goes away at least once a month, doesn't take his phone so that if things do wrong whoever he's hunting can't trace him back to her. She has no contact with him. He protects Lydia. Everything he does is to protect Lydia, and she knows that.

Lydia runs water in the sink and puts the plug in. She gets a cloth from the closet and Stiles pushes himself up on the counter, like a kid.

She dampens the cloth and swishes it in the water, creating a ripple. She twists the cloth, ringing out the water and raises it to his face when she stands between his legs. She starts at his forehead, washes over his scar and drags it down to his chin. She dabs gently at the cut underneath his eye and he winces, hands going out to grip her waist.

"Easy." Lydia says softly, plunging the cloth back in the sink.

She takes a step back and his hands drop from her hips. She turns around and reaches into the medicine cupboard that sits high on the wall, she reaches up for antiseptic cream and returns to her place between Stiles' legs.

"Close your eyes," Lydia orders gently, and Stiles still finds it in him to smirk but closes them anyway. She dabs the cream carefully under his eye at the cut. "You can open them now."

He breathes out loudly and Lydia takes his hands this time. She washes between his knuckles and under his fingernails, cleaning away any blood or dirt or gun powder.

"Thank you." He says when she's done. She kisses him, and his hands find their way underneath her jumper, brushing over her bra clasp.

"You need to shave," Lydia sighs when his lips kiss her throat, dips down to her collar bone as he pulls her jumper back.

He pulls back and scratches his face. "I quite like it."

Lydia tilts her head as if evaluating it. "I think there's something else you'd quite like."

She allows a smile to ghost her lips and she walks into their bedroom, he follows suit.

They always do this. He comes in, she cleans him up and then they'll move things to the bedroom because that's the only way they know how to say 'I miss you' and 'I'm glad I'm here'.

* * *

She pushes up on her shins when he's underneath her, canting her hips at the hardness that teases her entrance.

He's here and he's real and he didn't die this time.

Instinctively, his hands grip her hips and slowly she sinks onto him. She lets out a moan and something guttural escapes his mouth, and she rocks slowly. She wants this moment to last. And she believes it can.

She sets a rhythm that satisfies them both. His eyes are hooded, glassy with lust and adoration, and she thinks that it's taking a lot of effort in him to keep them open. His hands grip tighter as she quickens the pace, feeling the familiar tingle run from her toes up to her stomach, feeling a knot tie there.

Her lip becomes caught in her teeth when her clit starts catching on his stomach, sending a shot of pleasure through her.

She thinks she can do this all day everyday, and it's times like this where she really doesn't know why she lets him go. How would she live without him?

She feels the tug of the orgasm begin and she begins to pant, louder than before and picks her pace up. She can't get enough of him, and all she can do is chase it.

"Stiles," Her mouth is dry and her hair is falling in her face from the bun it was tied in.

He moves one hand from her hip and lightly rubs circles into her clit. She squeezes her eyes shut, lets her body become his with every circle and every stroke, she's a hurricane of burning heat and there's no stopping it.

She comes with a soft sigh, clenching around him, and continues riding him until his eyes slam shut and his hands grip her hips with all his strength. His head rolls back along with his eyes and Lydia sees his Adam's apple bulge when he swallows. A breathy moan escapes his mouth.

She pulls off of him, and crashes by his side, his arms enveloping her. He kisses her everywhere, her neck, her jaw, her collar bone. Everywhere.

With every kiss he says, "I love you."

He holds her carefully and close, because he knows she is breakable but he doesn't break. He never breaks her.

* * *

When she wakes, her hand is on Stiles' bare chest, right over his heart. She feels it thumping, still. And if he was a monster would he have a heart?

She lifts her head up to meet his eye to find them staring at the ceiling, unblinking.

"Hey," She says, her voice a rasp in the silence of the room.

He looks down and kisses her forehead, rubs her arm up and down with his hand.

"How did you sleep?" She asks, searching his eyes for anything.

"Better than usual," He tells her, she catches it then, the guilt flickering in his eye. "Does that make me a bad person?"

Lydia lifts her head up to look at him better. "How does getting more sleep make you a bad person?"

He shakes his head and runs a hand over his eyes. She thinks he might cry because his shoulders tense, she reaches up and pulls his hand away from his face.

"I don't feel that guilty about what I've done." He doesn't look at her, so Lydia turns so she's on her stomach, resting on her elbows so she can look at him properly.

"Isn't that the point of it? That you kill the people who deserve to die." She strokes his hair, moving the longer pieces back so she can see him.

"I kill people who don't deserve to live." He tells her, hand tracing patterns on her bare back. "It doesn't take away the fact that it's somebody's kid."

"Stiles," She says it lowly, he needs to hear it, his name, to remind him of who he is. "If you didn't go out and do what you do the world would be more dangerous-"

"It's still dangerous."

She lets out a sigh and presses a kiss to his chest. "But it's less dangerous because of you."

"Didn't stop Allison from dying."

Lydia is taken back for a moment, feels her throat tighten a bit. "Don't say that."

He looks at her and drops his head down onto the pillow.

"Yes, Allison was killed-"

"By me."

"By the Oni." She gives him a pointed look. "What you do now doesn't change the fact Allison died, you're absolutely right. But think of all the lives that you have saved."

He stays silent for a while, and she loses herself in her thoughts.

"Do you blame me?" He asks quietly. "For Allison."

"You know I don't," She doesn't even miss a beat. "And if I did?"

He looks panicked for a moment.

"I'd forgive you." She tells him. Presses a kiss to his throat, one to his chest, one to his lips. "I'd forgive you over and over and over."

"How do I go back to how I was when I was eighteen?"

"I'm not sure you can," She's truthful, honest and that's why Stiles loves her, that's why he does what he does for her. "But I love you anyway."

He has it in him to crack a smile, and it's enough for Lydia to figure it out.

How do you make a monster stop feeling monstrous? You give them something they can hold in their palms without it crushing. You give them something sweet and tell them to keep it. You wipe the blood from their hands, you say their name over and over, like an absolution. You forgive them. You forgive them. You forgive them. Everyday, for as long as they need to hear it.


End file.
